The middle: The plot thickens

In the last blog we started to talk about the road to publishing, and established that I had come up with a title for my nearly finished book. I do like to make sure we are all on the same page before I dive into my new and exciting blog! My lovely crossfit friend Colleen had edited my story and now it was time to go through and make the recommended changes. What I liked most about Colleen’s edits was the true teacher stylie in which they were written, complete with smiley faces and teacher-like anecdotes. Colleen very kindly awarded me 10 house points and even let me off my detention for that day.

When I received my printed story back from her, (it’s very exciting to see it in black and white and physically on paper rather than its virtual place on my laptop. Does this concrete the evidence that I am a 70’s child!?) I looked at the thick mass of paper and took another deep breath. Here we go again…. It was time to open the file on my laptop and get back to work. So I started going through each page – word by word, scroll by scroll – and made changes as per the recommendations. I had a glass (ahem, bottle) of red wine in hand (I blame Colleen for this as she demanded payment in vino, so of course I had to sample a few first, just to make sure I was paying fairly for her work) and I made the tweaks.

I was on a roll, transferring the red notes from the hard copy to the soft with the speed of… of… of well, a slightly tipsy author I suppose. I got into a routine of doing a bit every day and it was all going very well until one afternoon when I returned from work. I pressed the ‘on’ button (technical IT term- do try to keep up) on the laptop and nothing happened. Nothing. Now, never let it be said that I have poor technique when it comes to turning things on (cue frantic self-assurances that, “This has never happened to me before, it’s not a big deal, maybe the laptop has a headache”) so I tried again but this time I pressed firmly on the ‘on’ button. Nothing happened. Nothing. Next I tried a special trick and lightly massaged the button. Nothing. The only obvious thing to do from here was press it 73 times, frantically jabbing at it with shaky fingers. Nothing. I unplugged the laptop charger from the wall and blew on it, a well-known IT trick. Nothing. I plugged the laptop back in and still, NOTHING! *Cut to Corina rolling around on the floor in a proper tantrum, or ‘tanty’ as we say Down Under.* Why am I talking about myself in the third person all of a sudden? I am not sure.

So, 20 pages were complete pre-laptop meltdown, and there were still 153 to go. And here we are, in the present day, with a broken laptop and 153 pages left to edit. Luckily I was clever enough to back up (that’s right, another technical IT term) the book, otherwise this blog could have had the tragic ending of me trying to remember and rewrite 173 pages of my story before voluntarily checking myself into a psychiatric facility. That would also annoy the sh*t out of all of you, as I know you are desperately awaiting the finished version.

So now I am weighing up options for a plan B. Plan B either involves getting the old laptop fixed or buying a new laptop (ooooh the second option sounds so shiny, new and appealing) and getting the edit fully finished. Once that’s been done, my wonderful friend Lindsey will then give the prose a read through for a final edit. Then my friends (ah, cute, I’ve I promoted you all to friends! Too soon? Are we all comfortable with this?), we hit the critical time of finding a publisher. This is where you liking and sharing comes in very handy – the more popular the blog, the more likely it is someone will take pity and publish my work.

Shameless plug? Yes. But essentially everything that has happened so far has been with a little help from those around me. Everybody has played an important part – especially you, my friends, the readers of the blog. So if you share, you are helping my plight (or plummet) to get the book published. Have I mentioned that I would like this very much?

Written by Corina Hawkins, soon to be author of ‘Tattoos of memories’ and creatively bossed by Lindsey Barnett, who is a legend. Photo from Cordoba 4, Cala Lllonga, Ibiza.

The beginning: Part 2

"My friends only wanted to hear about it if I’d been scorned by my tempestuous mistress"

 

In my last blog, we talked about (yes we…. I always think of you reading my blog as a two way conversation – is that weird!?) the tumultuous journey of my book and my epiphany that finishing my story was actually just the beginning of the adventure. That was quite a depressing realisation if I’m honest, so I took a couple of months off writing.


I figured I deserved a break and that I should start to enjoy my evenings again instead of working and writing, working and writing. In that time, I discovered a supremely enjoyable but wonderfully challenging, hard and painful thing called Crossfit and, for the second time in my life, writing took a backseat as I flirted with a new, more exciting, physically rewarding love.


I was soon being ridiculed for how much I talked about my newfound obsession and after a while my friends only wanted to hear about it if I’d fallen off a treadmill, smacked my face or otherwise been scorned by my tempestuous mistress. Ever the defender of my great loves, I didn’t have the heart to break it to them that Crossfit didn’t actually involve any running on treadmills as that would go against its fundamental mantra of functional movements. Hmm. No wonder they made fun of me.


When the honeymoon period with Crossfit wore off (though I still can’t cut the ties fully and continue to flirt with the old girl a few times a week), I returned to the writing game, with a renewed confidence and vigour. I started by re-reading the novel and tweaking as I went. (That’s tweaking not twerking. Twerking wasn’t invented then). I initially thought that it was going to be painfully slow and a bit embarrassing to see my innermost thoughts and ideas on paper but it was such an important and cathartic part of the process. I came across a lot of errors and felt that it wasn’t really written the way I would like. So I played around, added stuff (technical writing term there ladies and gents), built up the characters and managed to make the story feel more true to what I had wanted.


Throughout my first rewrite, I spent a lot of time looking up correct grammar usage, researching syntax, subplots, soliloquies and alliteration (pun intended!) but quickly realised I am not a grammatical expert and, despite trying to give the prose my closest attention to detail, I knew I needed some extra eyes to read over what I had written. I put out a call to action to my network - i.e. updated my status on Facebook - to find an editor, and in a neat but totally true coincidence a friend from Crossfit volunteered to help in lieu of copious amounts of red wine. A deal was struck and I handed the story over to Colleen.


Waiting for the return of the book was a nervous time: What would she think? What if I’ve spent all this time and energy and it’s no good? What if wine turns out not to be payment enough to trawl through pages and pages of my storytelling? Luckily, and to reassure you all that it’s worth a read, I am pleased to say the feedback was overwhelmingly positive and Colleen’s comments have only added to the richness of the story I was trying to tell. Prior to this, I have had only five other people read through the book and give me some valuable feedback: So I thank Lisa, Tilly, Gareth, Sophie and Lindsey for their constructive comments and enthusiasm for what I’m trying to achieve.


While Colleen was editing the book I took the opportunity to relax and enjoy the welcoming (and very muscly) arms of Crossfit, and it’s there that I came up with the title. A twist on a lyric from one of my favourite tunes and a lyric one of my closest friends is particularly fond of, ladies and gentleman, I introduce to you ‘Tattoos of Memories’.


But you can’t read it just yet, it’s not quite ready.


Written by Corina Hawkins, soon to be author of ‘Tattoos of memories’ and creatively bossed by Lindsey Barnett, who is a legend. Photo from Crossfit 6100 in East Victoria Park.

This is just the beginning

This is just the beginning... Isn't this how every good story should start?

I’ve been asked a few times if my new book is based on real life and my first response is always “There’s a huge hint in how the book is categorised: Its classification is FICTION!” As we all know, fiction is literature in the form of prose that describes imaginary events and people; something that is invented or untrue. However, as a little side note, it is well known that authors (not sure I can call myself that yet) often take events from their life and use them as a stimulus to develop ideas. So yes, there may be a couple of things I have drawn upon, but the characters and story themselves are complete and utter fairy tale. Fantasy. Fake.  Or, as I sometimes describe them, “imaginary drivel.”*

*This is a joke. I am working very hard to make sure that this is an enjoyable novel.

The hardest part about writing a book is getting started. The first time I sat at my desk to write this story was around 2001. (I will add that this desk was an expertly constructed desk, built using the well-known carpentry tools of a spoon and a high heeled shoe). I was a student, a mature student I would like to point out (mature at 22!?) and I had decided to reflect upon my process of coming out. I sat at my “desk”, got one page in and then received an urgent call to go to the student union for a beer. The single beer turned in to multiple, the age of 22 turned in to 23, 24 25…. and the book was shelved.  Well, one whole page of one-finger typing on Word was shelved anyway.

I returned to the book again in 2003 when I found the old one-pager in a folder on my computer. I re-read what I had written and I started to add to my initial idea. This time I got a few pages in before being distracted by the most wonderful thing that can happen to a humanoid: I fell in love. I had, for many years, been unlucky in my romantic endeavours but at long last I was swept into the madness of falling in love and didn’t really emerge from my bubble to function like a normal human again until approximately 2005.

The initial book idea was very different prior to the events of 2003 to what it eventually became. The life events I experienced between then and 2005 made me realise that adding some further elements would make the book a little more interesting and also would ‘bulk it out’ a bit. An important consideration as my original idea would have probably only been about 1,000 words long and very possibly would have been made into a joke toilet roll or something. When I turned my attention to my story again, the ideas started to marinate, the cogs in my brain started to turn, I could see the events of my story gathering momentum……. But then I got distracted again, and I forgot all about it until 2008. (Writing this is making me wonder if I have ADD or something: I can never quite see something through to compl… Anyway, what was I saying?)

2008 was the year that I got my first smart phone and I started to utilise its cunning ‘notes’ application.  As I walked to work I would dangerously (seriously, walking and writing is pretty dangerous – don’t try it at home kids!) write out a skeleton of my ideas and make a bullet list of how the story could develop. Further to this, I made a pact with myself that I would write the book for three hours every evening, following a little timetable I would make for myself, as I had read somewhere that this was a good idea. Neither of those ideas ever happened.

In 2011 (yep, three years later), my partner and I moved to Australia and the thought of starting to write the book occurred to me again. However, making friends, supporting the local Perth liquor industry and work took over; there was no time for writing. It was two years after that that I had an epiphany:  I left the job which required me to leave the house at 7am and return at 7pm, (don’t worry about donning the little violin, there are people out there that work much harder – I’ve worked with them) and I started a new role which gave me the gift of time.

Now don’t get thinking that I am now some sort of slacker: I still work very hard (why are the voices in my head laughing!? Seriously, knock it off) and I still play hard. But in May 2013 something clicked and I just started to write. And write, and write. It was kind of an accident but suddenly the words were flowing and it felt right. This time, I made the commitment to write 2,000 words a night and I was smashing it. I think this was the trick, keeping the flow going and sticking to a timetable. I set little milestones and before I knew it I had written 50,000 words and finished my story.

At that point I felt elated that the task was done, and my idea from 10+ years ago had finally been penned. However, in October 2013, after a week of this initial feeling of elation, I realised that this book was far from finished. It had taken me bloody ages to get to this point and all I had done was literally sit down and bash out some words. I had spent so much time thinking about getting my ideas on paper that I didn’t just want it to be a book anymore: I wanted it to be a novel and I wanted it to be a blooming good one.  I slowly realised I was not at the end of my project, indeed I was just at the beginning….

Written by Corina Hawkins, who is currently writing a book and edited by Lindsey Barnett, who is a legend.